Fast-growing 4PL Priority Solutions International has built a sterling reputation for delivering reliable, secure and consistently compliant supply chain services for the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry. Their state-of-the-art distribution center in Memphis, Tennessee serves six of the world’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers, making the latest advances in health care products available to more than 35,000 sales reps, doctors, pharmacists and retailers.

Having been asked by one of their longtime customers to expand into order fulfillment and distribution of drug samples to support a new product launch, Priority Solutions acquired a warehouse and needed an advanced Warehouse Management System to support the new facility’s pharmaceutical operations – fast.

Solution:

To help Priority Solutions continue to meet demand, maintain a competitive advantage, and exploit the new business opportunity, Upp Technology implemented irms|WM® Warehouse Management, including support for U.S. FDA 21 CFR Part 11 and GAMP for a validated end-to-end transaction audit trail.

Priority Solutions’ fulfillment and distribution center accepts more than 50,000 cases of pharmaceuticals every day, and ships more than 35,000 cases per week – confirming delivery with clients most often within 48 hours of shipping. The lot-controlled inventory on-hand, organized to support the industry best practices for First Expired/First Out (FEFO), often exceeds 10 million individual units each week.

The irms|WM solution is a key contributor to Priority Solutions’ ability to consistently achieve the 99.8% service levels required by their customers. Integrated with RF and bar coding technology, the system ensures fast, accurate, complete tracking for each and every inbound and outbound delivery, providing a verifiable audit trail developed to stringent government standards for pharmaceuticals.

Integrated with irms|BI® Business Intelligence, irms|WM text and graphical built-in and ad-hoc reporting enables Priority Solutions to meet the rigorous standards required by pharmaceutical companies. With irms|WM, shipments – down to the packet or vial level – can be located at a moment’s notice, and interfacing through a Web Portal provides complete client visibility to each and every order with line item drill-down.

In supporting one powerhouse client, the multinational distributor of pharmaceuticals in fact used irms|WM to great effect and customer satisfaction in the 2004 Merck Vioxx worldwide withdrawal. Supporting reverse logistics, irms|WM visibility enabled Priority Solutions to identify shipments for recall from pharmaceutical sales representatives and physician distribution networks, in addition to quarantining the product in the warehouse for return to vendor.

Upp Technology continues to support Priority Solutions 24x7. In recent years, when the company’s operations were adversely affected by tornadoes touching down near their facilities, the company recovered irms|WM indexes from Priority Solutions’ backups, purged and reloaded the database – remotely, over a weekend, for zero downtime.

Priority Solutions has also benefited from upgrade services, including life cycle development to incorporate functionality for automating government and pharmaceutical industry requirements, such as Patient Information/Vaccine Information Statement (PI/VIS) and Patient Information Revisions/Vaccine Information Statement Update (PIR/VIRU), and Price Index/Producer Price Index (PI/PPI).

Business Value:

irms|WM has enabled Priority Solutions International to operate at FDA standards for pharmaceutical handling, providing a complete chain of custody for controlled substances. End-to-end tracking, robust reporting capabilities and interface through a Web portal provide secure, on-demand visibility for the company’s clients. And order management and fill rate analysis assist in keeping near 100% fill on shipments, yielding greater efficiency, cost savings and client satisfaction.